my user name is brian stelter and i hope you will join us on cnn.com where my colleagues and i will be covering the day's biggest media stories and we'll recap the stories next week at 11:00 a.m. eastern. "state of the union" starts right now. are we there yet? today, 'tis the season to be jolly, and the president may have reason to be. >> we're moving in the right direction. >> is it for real? the lowest jobless rate in five years may mean a new political equation. a conversation with two top economists along with annie lowry. and -- >> for the first time in over a decade, we have halted advances in the iranian nuclear program. >> a deal one of the world's leading state sponsors of terror and what it might mean to the terrorism threat. mike mccaul and adam schiff join

us. >> then -- >> this is a remarkable leader. someone worth studying. someone it was an honor to have met. >> blowback. newt gingrich on the hostility prochted by his praise of nelson mandela, and our political panel looks at the republican charm offensive, bill's hillary crusade, and what harry reid said. this is "state of the union." all the world is a stage and there are lots of actors these days. president obama acknowledge the u.s. would accept a peaceful nuclear energy program in iran. 85-year-old merrill newman is back on u.s. soil and with family after being detained. north korean authorities seized newman off a departing plane more than a month ago. joining me now, congressman michael mccall, chairman of the house homeland security and congressman adam schiff, a

member of the house select intelligence committee. thanks for coming in on a snowy day. not always easy in washington. i want to start with merrill newman because i know his son is in your district and you had been back and forth with him. why did north korea seize him and why did they let him go? >> it's a very good question, and i'm not sure we'll ever know completely the answer. it may be as the north koreans have said that as a personal peek, they found out about his war record and pulled him off the plane. it may have something to do with iran, with the fact that north korea is not the focus of attention right now, that they often will grab people to gain attention, to get a world leader to come and rescue them from north korea. it may have something to do with the internal fight going on, the purge of the uncle of kim jong-un. so it may be purely internal north korean politics. it may be a shout to the rest of

the world, we want you to pay attention to us and our nuclear program or it may be confined to something mr. newman said. >> he was over there for closure for his north korean war activities. anyway, we're glad he's home. and you're right, the attention has been elsewhere, mr. chairman. it has been on iran, and i want to play you something that the president said yesterday. >> we can envision is comprehensive agreement that involves extraordinary constraints and verification mechanisms and intrusive inspections but thatiran to hav program. >> so iran with a peaceful nuclear program means it will have some enriched uranium at a much lower level than the 20% that is needed to build a nuclear weapon. is that okay? >> we've been working on these sanctions for a decade, since i have been in tcongress, and

to get to the point where the administration, whatever party, could negotiate with iran to dismantle their nuclear weapons programming, what i'm concerned about is we have not dismantled their program, and yet relieve the sanctions which is a $7 billion economic aid to the country. when i talk to former administrations, the bucsh administration, they tell me one of the biggest mistakes they made is in north korea where they agreed to these accords and then the north koreans got the nuclear weapon. i don't want to see the same mistake happen in iran. i want to be optimistic. kennedy said don't fear to negotiate but don't negotiate out of fear. what i'm concerned about is we're setting up a problem. yesterday, just yesterday, the president of iran said the centrifuges will never stop in iran. that sends to me a very cold, hard message that they are not intent on a civilian nuclear

peaceful program, but rather towards getting a nuclear weapon. >> let me for you congressman schiff read part of what president rouhani said yesterday. he said nuclear technology and uranium enrichment is our definite right, but progress, better living conditions, and welfare for the people is also our definite right. you saw what countries got angry with the deal and you saw what a blow was inflicted on the zionists. so in context he was talking to a crowd, some of whom were not all that happy that iran is dealing with the united states and, of course, other western countries. so my question to you is does it complicate things when the administration says, yeah, we could see some enriched uranium for nuclear power purposes but nothing else? >> well, it does. you know, it's one thing to say that iran can have a peaceful nuclear energy program. you can have a peaceful nuclear energy program with no enrichment. the uranium can be provided for

that, it can be taken back. centrifuges, they certainly don't need fast speed centrifuges, they don't need thousands of centrifuges. the only reason you want to have the kind of capability iran is developing is because you want a fast break capability. >> to ramp up uranium quickly. >> so what i think the administration needs to push for in this negotiation is a peaceful program without enrichment, and i wouldn't begin the process by conceding anything on enrichment. >> it seems like it's already a little bit -- now, the exact nature of it, the idea that maybe we would ship in enriched uranium capable of nuclear energy only, but nonetheless a lot of people have complained it does seem like the administration has given up something they shouldn't be gig up. >> this violates the u.n. security council resolutions, the u.n. proliferation treating and empowers other countries in

the northeast to say we're going to strike an accord to allow you to continue your uranium enrichment and it encourages other countries to say we've abided by this and if you allow iran to do this, why can't we do this? >> we didn't stop pakistan. we didn't stop north korea. the idea that iran can be stopped if they want to make a nuclear weapon seems to not have a great historic precedent. >> they have the know-how. they're always going to have the know-how. what would it take if they make the decision that they're going to pursue the bomb? it would take a sustained military campaign. not just a bombing campaign because a bombing campaign would set them back for a period of time, but if they were determined, it would have to be repeated bombing campaign and it may involve boots on the ground. because that is often an awful prospect, we need to try everything, in my view, to see if that he is a peaceful way to put an end to this program. that's why i think the interim deal makes sense. i share the skepticism that we

can get to a final deal -- >> the president said the chances were 50/50. we may be talking about something that's never going to happen. >> i would say that's very optimistic. >> i would add we passed and adam and i voted for the iranian sanctions act on the central bank which is where the energy is coming out of the transactions. very important legislation that was on its way to the senate. it has not been passed. i had a letter to harry reid, 70 members signed on to say, look, let's pass that bill to give us the leverage. this is all about leverage -- >> so sanctions -- new sanctions would start in six months. >> the iranians would know we're serious about sanctions and it would give us leverage for the administration in their talks. i happen to agree if we can have a civilian program, fine, without nuclear enrichment. ha is the goal we both share on both sides of the isle. >> i do part company with the idea we should pass another sanctions bill. there are many who are pushing that right now. we don't want to be perceived boo i our partners as the ones

that are throttling this agreement before it has a chance to live. and if we do, then i think the coalition that has supported these sanctions, which includes many reluctant partners like china and russia, starts to unravel. it will be one thing if the iranians renege, if they cheat, then deal is off, with he n-- w not only resume the freeze, we add sanctions but i don't think we take steps unnecessary. the iranians know the minute they renege sanctions come flying out of the congress. >> what better way to show that than to show we're serious about it. we need to give them every leverage we can on these negotiations. >> let me ask you a homeland security question because i had the heads of the intelligence committees on last week, and both dianne feinstein and mike rogers said that they felt that

the u.s. was less safe now than it has been both because of the kind of versatile and widespread threat of terrorism, not just one group but a whole bunch of groups, and because one or two people can do a lot of damage. i want to see if you agree with that, mr. chairman, that the united states proper is less safe now because of this moving threat of terrorism. >> i think a lot of programs, policies we put in place since 9/11 have prevented a 9/11-style attack. on the other hand, i think the threat has become greater, not lesser. so when the president of the united states talks about the downgrades of the threat, his narrative is al qaeda is on the run and since bin laden has been killed the tlelt is no longer existing i think is a false narrative and premise because as we see this threat all throughout northern africa, as we saw egypt fall, libya, now syria is a great culmination of the sunni/shia conflict i

personally see it's spreading like a wildfire through northern africa and the middle east and as that threat increases overseas, so, too, does it increase to the homeland and that's my biggest concern as homeland chairman is to keep that threat outside the united states. i think it's getting worse, not better. >> one of my questions was this week was consumed by the head of amazon saying we're going to use drone to deliver packages. whether self-promotion or whatever it happened to be, it's possible, and my question is if drones become that easy, like we can drop your books off at your doorstep in 30 minutes, what's to keep people who would do us harm from setting up a drone with a dirty bomb or something that could -- i mean, is that feasible? >> you know, it's feasible. i don't think that's the primary threat we need to be concerned about. i was watching those drone

stories, and it kind of struck me as like the jetsons come to life. it may be nice to get your books from a drone. the thing is that that drone is going to need cameras on it to guide it and i think people are going to have real privacy problems even if it's delivering something you want that it is scanning all of our neighborhoods as there will be very little privacy left with that kind of situation. i do have a grave concern that as drone technology proliferates, many other countries are going to start employing it and employing it with lethal capabilities, and that's a big problem. it's something that we need to think about in terms of our own drone program and the precedent we're setting and what that will mean for china and russia and others. >> last word, congressman. >> well, i think drones -- look, we've had a policy and a narrative that's ignoring a major threat that's out there that i think threatens the homeland. i think drones are a good tool to go after high value targets.

i think good intelligence, special forces, i don't think occupying countries is the way to go. i do think that there are smart ways to do it. drones alone are not going to kill an ideology. this is a war of ideology that in my judgment the ideology of the enemy is growing and spreading, and i think the only way that we're going to finally end this is not just through military might, but by utilizing the moderate muslim which we have not effectively done to get that message out that, you know, that this is not acceptable. the moderate muslim can be a very effective tool in this war against terrorism and against this war of ideology, and i think we need to focus on that some more as well. >> i agree completely. >> congressman mccall and congressman schiff, thanks for coming. skroop thanks for having us. >> good luck on the way home. when we run, the number of jobs goes up, the unemployment rate goes down. are happy times here again? and who gets to plan the victory lap? that's next. hi honey, did you get the toaster cozy?

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cortizone-10 has the strongest nonprescription itch medicine plus moisturizers to help heal skin fast. cortizone-10. feel the heal. after five years of stops and starts the u.s. economy may actually be in a steady recovery. the unemployment rate is the lowest in five years. home sales and prices are up, stocks are rising, and gas prices are falling. not everyone is feeling it though. a new cnn poll show that is a quarter of the public believes things are getting better.

nearly 4 in 10 say it's getting worse. joining me now, kevin has set, former economic adviser to mitt romney, "new york times" economic policy reporter annie lowry, and mark stazandi. is this real? the worst has happened and we're on the road to recovery, yes? >> yes. i think we're clearly in a strong recovery now. if you look at the inflection and the data over the last couple months, it's really the best couple of months i have seen since the great recession began. consumer confidence is soaring. auto sales jumped up to 16.4 million above the 16 million number which is kind of like the 98.6 for the economy. everything is looking good. it's that rare moment where we seem to be right on the verge of a boom. >> wow. could something mess with it? >> oh, yeah, sure. i'm very excited as well, but it's not going to be a straight line. there's two big hurdles in the next few months. the first is the battles in

washington over the budget. we can't go down the same path we did in october and shut the government down. >> they seem united in their ability to not close it so we'll see. >> and the other hurdle is the federal reserve. the federal reserve is going to begin pulling back on its bond-buying program, and, you know, that could be a little tricky as well. >> that's what's kept interest rates low. >> exactly. >> essentially. >> it's part of it. and they talked about tapering -- so-called tapering, pulling back on the bond buying early last year and interest rates soared. so there is reason to be a little nervous about that as well. >> annie, who gets credit for this? >> i think that this is just the economy finally getting into kind of a self-sustaining recovery. years after the recession. it's worth noting even if the recovery picks up and growth gets stronger, we're still really far from an economy that's feeling good for most people. earnings are down in some cases, wage growth has been really sluggish. so it doesn't feel great to most

americans even if optimism is picking up, and so if we had job growth as fast as we saw last month, you're still looking at six years before you get something like a really healthy unemployment rate. >> to that let me just show you cnn/orc poll. it was taken between the 18th and the 20th before some of these numbers cage out. but the question was how are things going in the country? and those who said things are going badly, 59%, which is a 6-point jump from september. is that because of the so-called income gap? like this sort of the rising rich and -- my theory is just that, yeah, you're seeing all these great figures but people don't feel it because maybe they haven't actually been a recipient of the recovery. >> i think there's something to the idea that there are two americas. if you're in the top part of the income distribution, certainly the top third of the distribution, then no problem. your balance sheet is very strong. if you have any debt at all,

it's probably a 30-year fixed rate mortgage you have refied down. you have no other debt. your house is appreciating, your stock portfolio is appreciating. if you're in the bottom third, you have problems, right? we still have foreclosure issues, student loan debt, and incomes are very constrained. incomes haven't grown. >> except for the top. >> there's something to stick in here which is the good employment news we saw on friday had no impact on the top 1%. the people who didn't have a job who now have a job are the people who were really in the bottom half, but also if you look at the michigan survey which is the most scientific economic survey out there, then sentiment skyrocketed in the last survey. it was the biggest increase i have ever seen one. >> but it's still well below where it was before the recession. >> but the ordinary folks are stating to see it, too, is all i'm saying. >> back to who gets credit, this will play out in the budget

discussions. it will play out first i think on extending long-term unemployment because republicans look at it and say, this was a stimulus program. we don't need it anymore now that unemployment is coming down, and the democrats are saying, no, we do. and the president argues as many have, look, extended unemployment is great because it goes right back into the economy. so who has the upper hand here when they look at it? do people look and go, well, the stimulus may have worked but it plays out in arguments? >> i think part of what you're seeing with the politics here is you would have this cliff, right? a lot of people would be getting these extended unemployment benefits and right after christmas they wouldn't. that's probably not the best way to do it even if you believe you should start reducing. and most states have reduced the weeks of unemployment benefits already, but that's not the way to go about it is just to suddenly yank the rug out from a lot of families that are feeling a lot of pain already. and i think that there's a little bit of -- there's the democrats are really going to push for this. i think there's a little bit of queasiness among republicans at

kind of just let 2 million families -- >> it should be extended in my view. the 7% unemployment rate is about where the unemployment rate is in the typical recession. it's still very difficult. if you consider the people who were under employed and given the low wage growth, i think the economy is much too weak at this point. the way the current emergency iu program is structured it does phase out as unemployment rates come in, then people get less emergency ui. it happens state by state. the way it's structured phases out. >> there's still unemployment benefits. this is just extended unemployment benefits we're talking about. do you argue, mark? >> no, i don't. i think the lengthy unemployment benefits have created a real problem and we've created this class of folks who are unemployed for longer than a year that is very, very difficult to reconnect to society. i think the highest priority right now is to develop programs for the long term unemployed who are having a really hard time even getting a job interview

right now. and focusing on sort of extending the problem i think is the wrong thing to focus on. if you look at president obama's economic speech, the part i like the best is his emphasis on addressing the long-term unemployment problem. he said he was going to meet with a bunch of executives at the white house soon and announce a new program. i'm quite eager to see what he says there. >> that you get a tax credit for hiring someone who has been unemployment for a certain time. >> these folks are really in trouble and the good unemployment news doesn't really affect the long-term -- >> but we should do both. we should help the folks that are still in trouble. kevin is right, there's an element that's there because of the ui program. >> and people that stay unemployed because they can get enough from unemployment. >> there's a lot of academic work and research, but my estimates a percentage is due to ui benefits. kevin is right, we have to work on long term structural unemployment -- >> but i want to say i disagree that we should do both in the

following sense. that what we should do, if you want to give more money to the people who are currently unemployed, just give them the money. give them a lump sum of cash. don't take them stay unemployed for another three months. >> mark zandi, annie lowry, kevin hasset, thank you for coming by. when we return, he called nelson mandela one of the greatest leaders of our lifetime and incurred the wrath of his facebook friends. then nehe fired back. newt gingrich is next. streetline has looked at the problem of parking, which has not been looked at for the last 30, 40 years, we wanted to rethink that whole industry, so we go and put out these sensors in each parking spot and then there's a mesh network that takes this information sends it over the internet so you can go find exactly where those open parking spots are.

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welcome back. we're going to show you some pictures, they are crowds celebrating the life of nelson mandela outside his house in johannesburg today. amazing that such a celebration over there, certainly sadness, but it's largely been a celebration. joining me for more on nelson mandela, newt gingrich. you wrote a facebook page and put out a statement praising nelson mandela, a man you supported very early on. you were a supporter of sanctions against south africa for apartheid. wrote that on your facebook, and then were surprised by some of the reaction you got. i'm just going to read them for folks, a couple of them. such an amazing rewrite of history since 1962 and 1990, newt. i thought you of all people, a historian, would be true to who

this guy really was. and then from someone else, this clench fist murdering guerilla warrior does not deserve respect from informed americans. what do you make of this backlash? >> i waser surprised by it, and calista had posted my statement and i was amazed at some of the intensity, some of whom came back three, four, and five times repeating how angry they were. so i wrote my newsletter at gingrich productions on friday. i entitled, it what would you have done? everybody says they love freedom. everybody who is proud of the farmers at lexington and concord who stood ups grateful the british empire, here you you emerge as a young man. he went to a methodist school and mandela went on to be largely a nonviolent person -- >> a lawyer. >> a tried in court, very effectively used his role as defendant, and

then you takeover in'40s by the aggressively i would say savagely proapartheid party, and all of your options are gone. you are up against an oppressive dictatorship which if you're black means you're going to be in effect in a police state and of the people who was opposed to it. ironically most of the things people complain about occurred during the 27 years he was in prison. and so -- >> and that comes up a lot -- >> all of that stuff occurs while he's in jail. now, the two points i make to people about mandela personally are, first of all, this very long, deep commitment to freedom, which i think most of us could identify with. and second, that after 27 years in prison, he doesn't come out bitter. he doesn't come out angry. he comes out as an extraordinarily wise man who actually invites his prison guard to sit in the front row at

his inauguration as president. >> do you think that this outpouring online at least on your facebook and ted cruz also put out a very complimentary statement in saluting nelson mandela and got the same kind of pushback. do you think these are fellow conservatives? do you have any -- who do you think these folks are? >> look, i think there are some people who bought a rationale that defined everybody who was in any way in rebellion against the established system in the third word as anti-american which i don't think they were. i think that we -- in many cases we were the symbol of what they wanted. we were the kind of country they wanted to become. but i think there are people who have sustained this kind of mythology and there's no question that in the '50s mandela moved from a nonviolent model towards being allied with the communists, and my point to conservatives is there weren't

any conservative allies. you know, churchill allied with stalin during world war ii, and i think in a similar tradition, mandela was desperate by that stage. he saw the scale of the oppression, and the only allies that were available, frankly, were on the hard left. >> as you well know, president ronald reagan opposed putting sanctions on south africa for its apartheid government. he rejected calls for mandela to be released. same with margaret thatcher, another leading conservative at the time. we know they were very focused on communism and the south african government had been an ally but they were on the wrong side of history. >> they were, but in all fairness to reagan, reagan's ambassador to south africa consistently put pressure on the government to modify its position. and consistently condemned apartheid. but their commitment was to defeat the soviet empire. frankly, they underestimated the importance of islamic terrorism

because theyn' think about it. they had one goal, which was a pretty big goal, which was to defeat the soviet empire, and they succeeded and in the process they weren't willing to be diverted to what they would have called secondary issue when you look at the worldwide scale of the cold war. i think there's no question that you had a continued american effort to end apartheid. there were arguments -- >> they weren't pro-apartheid. they were just against sanctions. >> they were against sanctions. at the same time, for example, i met at the time with the chief of the zulu and he was against sanctions. there was a split argument inside south africa but a group of us decided in the end, a number of younger conservatives at that time, bob walker, vin webber, myself. if you're pro-freedom, you can't be tolerant of apartheid. >> newt gingrich, thank you. always interest.

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what he said was true. >> okay. >> if you want to keep the insurance you have, you can keep it. the problem is we did not put the bill into effect that way. >> so that's the majority leader in the senate, harry reid, explaining with the president did not break his promise and that people can keep their health care if they want despite the fact that millions actually are losing their health care. joining me around the table, mo is communications director. susan page, washington bureau chief for "usa today" around former ohio secretary of state and current senior fellow at the family research council ken blackwell. welcome all. so we've seen to have gotten past at least from the statis c statistics the white house will

give us the idea that the website is a mess. what we don't know is how it's actually going to play out. i'm not sure harry reid helped him at all in that particular interview. what do you see moving forward as the president's main problem as he tries to sell this? >> i think what the president has been doing the past week and will be doing over the next couple weeks is highlighting all the various benefits that the american people are already getting and i think that's an important thing because first he had to fix the website and it looks like we're well on track to getting there. but also make sure that people realize it's not just the several hundred thousand people that are signing up, but there are millions of people that are benefiting already whether it's through pre-existing -- the protections against pre-existing conditions or young people being allowed to stay on their policy and the other piece that's very important is the american people understand there is actually another choice besides this. and that is the republican plan, which is repeal, which is to take all of that away from you and that's what we need to keep

going as democrats. >> we've heard from some economists that the economy is getting better which i think probably bolsters the president's arguing positions on a lot of things. health care salvageable to you? >> no, i really don't think so. i think obama care is still unworkable, unpopular, and unfundable. what this is is a program that has accelerated our path to a single-payer system even though the president denies this. harry reid's comment, i mean, that was a classic case of what are you going to believe, your lying eyes or me? your lying neighbors and their narratives about how hard it is to work into the program, how skyrocketing their health care kobss is under this new program. this is a case where repeal is the only logical way of avoiding a catastrophe. >> susan, does the president in this argument, and he's not going to repeal -- he's not

going to let this law get repealed, does he have new juice because the website horror stories are trickling downward. the economy is looking like not great but better. does he gather some new steam from this? >> i think it's one of the cases where the reality will matter. obviously the website is working better for consumers but we don't know how well it's working for working with the insurers getting these people who are trying to enroll. the administration said 1 out of 10 people signing up, there are errors in the forms that go to the insurance companies. that also needs to work out. there's been a lot of damage to the promise he made and broke that if you liked your plan, you could keep it. whatever explanation can be made, including senator reid's kind of perplexing one, i think that cost him a lot of credibility with americans. he needs to rebuild that. >> i want to move you to a different politician. and that is bill clinton who

famously gave democrats cover, as we say, and said, well, i actually think he ought to let people keep their health care coverage. caused quite the stir. he did an interview with our juan carlos lopez and talked about that moment when he said, i think the president ought to change his mind on this. >> i got a lot at stake here personally in the work i have done for health care and the work i tried to support -- the support i have tried to give the president, and hillary does, too. >> i love the and hillary does, too. it caught more than a few ears because my feeling is that hillary clinton, were she to run say in 2016 for president, would like this off the table and would like to have distance from it. >> well, i don't know if i agree with that because i still do think that the politics will at the end of the day will play out in our favor as folks see what the difference is between the two sides, but, look, you know,

if people think it is news that bill and hillary clinton consider themselves partners in a lot of their endeavors, then they just haven't been paying attention to the past 20 years. and i think president clinton is -- >> i have a lot at stake here personally just sort -- >> which he does because it was bill clinton who took this issue onulork out so well. he's invested a lot of himself. secretary clinton has invested a lot of herself. a lot of democrats have invested a lot of themselves in this, and i think, you know, there are a lot of poex who are still very happy to see that it is here today. >> so get out your magic eight ball here and tell me, come 2016 will the democratic presidential candidate, whoever it might be, be running on look what we accomplished? >> i don't think so. in the short term with magic people like mo who can make words work, they might be able to tread water politically. in the long term economically,

this does not work. it will accelerate the debt. it will, in fact, contribute to slow economic growth and slow economic recovery. it will not work. only thing that was missing in that bill clinton clip was him looking at the camera and saying, i did not embrace, i did not embrace single-payer health care in the 1990s, and he did. so mo is right, there's no way he can run away from this. >> 2014, let me bring you back two years. in 2014 what happens to democratic candidates? will the bulk of them run on obama care? >> i think when you talk to 2014 candidates now, they are extremely nervous about this because mo may be right in the passage of time this turns out to be a very successful program that transforms the american medical system. hard to envision it having sorted out its many problems by next november. democrats are very concerned

about how they handle it and what you hear democratic candidates say now is it's a good plan, we need to fix it, acknowledging there are things that need to change. hard to do when republicans won't get on board -- >> i think what you're hearing more and more democrats say it's a good plan, there are problems that need to be fixed, and that's what we are trying to do while the other side is trying to break it. the other side is trying to kill the plan and going so far as to shut the government down causing a $24 billion hit to our economy. that's not the solution. the solution is to strengthen it where it needs to be strengthened, fix stuff that needs to be fixed and amplify it where it need to be am plied. >> young people, physicians are moving in our direction. >> meaning? >> saying this is overreach. this is overreach. let's take a step back and let's go at this bit by bit so that we can manage it economically, so that we can create a system that expands the number of physicians, not drive physicians

out of the system. that will, in fact, take down our health care system and we will no longer be the most enviable health care system throughout the world. >> let me bring you to the close of this week which saw the death of nelson mandela who is so kind of universally praised at this point for what he did for south africa, for the way he showed the way to reconciliation. your thoughts. >> nelson mandela was an irrepressible humanitarian figure that moved humanity forward. that's how he will be remembered. he didn't get chained down by past history. he looked forward to the future with hope. >> susan? >> absolutely. what a figure. and what an example to washington perhaps. i mean, surely bridging the wounds of apartheid was a harder thing to do than bridging the pat spartisan waters here.

>> mo? >> that's the point that strikes me. if nelson mandela can forgive his oppressors and the people that oppressed a nation and worked with them, maybe everyone else here with learn something from that. >> some of the little slights are really minute. >> starting today. when we return republicans are getting some tutoring to learn how to run against women. i'm not kidding. la's known definitely for its traffic, congestion, for the smog. but there are a lot of people that do ride the bus. and now that the buses are running on natural gas, they don't throw out as much pollution into the air. so i feel good. i feel like i'm doing my part to help out the environment. she loves a lot of it's what you love about her. but your erectile dysfunction -

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we are back with mo elleithee, susan page, and ken blackwell. we learned this week that congressional republicans are learning how to talk to women and how to run against women. i'm going to give mo first crack at this because he loves this story. but before you do, i just want to give you a few little blasts from the past from our current president. >> i don't think i'm that bad. >> you're likable enough, hillary. no doubt about it. >> how are you going to help the american autoworkers.

>> hold on, sweetie. we'll do a press avail. i'm here because she's one of the finer looking politicians. >> so anyway, that was just to calm you down about the republicans learning to talk to women. >> i think the republicans' problem, what was so amusing to me as a democratic operative about the story that they were going to start holding sensitivity trainings on how to talk to and about women, they think the entire problem with women is about the rhetoric. it's not. it's about the policies. it's about the fact that republicans say they want to do more and better outreach to women while continuing to try to push greater restrictions on women's access to health care. they're doing nothing in the congress right now except for repeal and continuing to push further restrictions on women's access to health care. and i don't see how they get over the hump. >> ken, you have to at least be able to get women or any constituency to listen to you, and if the rhetoric turns you

off, it may just be rhetoric -- i didn't think it was that bad of an idea to say, listen, folks, sit down and listen to me, these are not ways to do this. >> improving communication ask ils to a variety of groups always important. the president improved his communication skills talking to women as we saw from that tape. look, at the end of the day republicans don't have a problem working and talking with women. we control 30 of the governorships. we control 26 state houses and senate chambers. you know, we, in fact, know how to speak to women on their policy issues. i would agree with mo as long as it is about improving the art of communication and not abandoning policy, i think it's a pretty smart move. >> how about toning down some -- what mo is suggesting is whenever you talk about a woman's right to choose, that

somehow -- >> mo and i disagree on the question of life and religious liberty and i'm saying that we both need to know how to speak to women on those issues without abandoning our policy differences because that's what politics is all about, being able to convince people that your policy is right. >> but, you know -- >> and we have done that in the states and we can do it on the national level. >> and what is true, susan, is that republicans among white married women tend to do very well. >> well, yes, but women have elected democratic presidents. there's been a big gender gap on the national level for the republican party. women so perplexing. if you call them sweetie, turns them off. if you joke about rape or minimize the crime of rape, it turns women off. >> it turns me off. >> exactly. maybe that's a lesson that everybody ought to learn. >> right. and just sort of think through what you're actually about to

say. so i've got to thank you all here. mo, susan, ken, thanks for coming by. and thank you all for watching "state of the union." i'm candy crowley in washington. fareed zakaria gps starts right now. >> this is gps, the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed ka czzaczar ya comin you live from new york. we'll start today's show with nelson mandela and we will ask what happened to his legacy in africa and beyond? i have a great panel including one of mandela's close kf dants. then the man who until this summer was president obama's top adviser on national security, tom donnelly, on the iran deal and on why he says the u.s. doesn't need to cut a deal with hamid karzai of afghanistan. next, how